Social Media Marketing for eCommerce

If you are an eCommerce brand or want to launch one in the future, learning social media marketing is a must for you.

The social media user count is expected to reach 4.41 Billion by 2025. So, you just have to find the relevant people on these platforms and market yourself with effective strategies.

84% of US shoppers visit a social media platform before going through with a purchase. So, the potential for growth of eCommerce with social media platforms is only going to increase.

Let’s dive into social media marketing for eCommerce.

Social Media Marketing for eCommerce Tactics

Goal Setting

Probably the very first thing you should do before jumping into social media marketing is set your goals. Without a clear goal in mind, it won’t be easy to track progress.

Your goals can vary depending on your business model. They might include:

• The traffic
• Social media audience count
• Conversion rate
• Engagement rate

Adding Value

When was the last time you bought something online right after seeing an ad from a retailer? Probably never!

As an eCommerce brand, you want to add value to your prospects’ lives. Write posts that resonate with them. Observe the engagement rate and make tweaks to get better results.

Once you develop a bond with your audience, you can promote your products in a subtle manner.

Focus on addressing your prospects’ pain points or desires through your content at first.

Optimizing Posts with Keywords

Your social media posts bridge the gap between you and your potential customers. Optimize them so that they reach new prospects.

How do you optimize a social media post? Simply add the keywords you think your prospects may be searching for. This is called keyword research.

For instance, if you are working in the shoe industry, mentions like “best comfortable shoe for men” can bring a specific audience to your post.

You can get an idea of what people are searching for from the Google search.

Plus, make sure your posts are visually appealing. Posting beautiful images and videos of your product is a major optimization technique these days.

However, optimizing a post won’t boost its visibility to your current audience. It can help with attracting more prospects, building your audience, and improving the chances of conversions.

Showing Testimonials

A whopping 70% of online consumers look for reviews before purchasing anything. Customer testimonials make your brand appear legit and trustworthy.

Trusting a brand with positive reviews from past customers is easier. And, it makes an even better impression if the review is user-generated.

Don’t take our word for it. Believe this fact: 80% of consumers believe user-generated content is extremely valuable.

So, if you have a happy customer, having them put up a positive review about your brand can help your conversion rate.

Leverage Video Content’s Power

You can realize the importance of video content in the eCommerce industry by looking at this fact: 64% of consumers make a purchase decision after watching videos on social media platforms.

Video content is the favorite content of your target audience, no matter what business you are in, period.

This is because humans prefer to watch video content rather than read written text. For this, you can use an online voice generator to add realistic human voices to your videos.

So, you must know how to create an impactful video marketing campaign on social media to drive eCommerce sales.

Engage with Prospects on Social Media

One important aspect of effective social media marketing for eCommerce is engagement. Without engaging with customers and prospects, it would be quite difficult to attract new leads and upsell the existing customer base.

Your social media posts shouldn’t be pushy at first. Find out what your audience is interested in and create valuable, attractive posts on those topics.

Once you get good engagement on your posts, you can then start promoting your eCommerce products in a subtle manner.

You can engage with your customers by answering their questions and addressing their complaints in the comment section of your posts.

This way, potential customers that are considering your business can know that you care about your customers.

Post Consistently

The digital age demands consistent content from brands. If you don’t provide quality content regularly, your customers and prospects are going to forget about you.

But, regular content publishing can be overwhelming. Thankfully, you can adopt an effective technique that will keep your social accounts active. And, that’s creating a content calendar.

There are free tools that you can use to create a content calendar and keep your social audience engaged.

A social content calendar keeps you consistent, helps with social media marketing for eCommerce, and tracks your performance.

Don’t Ignore Hashtags

Hashtags have now become an important aspect of social media marketing. Using hashtags, you can maximize your organic reach, attracting more qualified leads to your business.

But, first, you should find the terms your prospects may be looking for. Do some keyword research and make those keywords your social media hashtags.

There are free tools to do that as well.

For instance, if you are in the backpack industry, using “best backpacks for kids” as a hashtag will help you reach people searching for that phrase.

But, make sure to use hashtags the right way. While you can use a lot of hashtags on Instagram, the same strategy isn’t ideal for Facebook.

Use Automation

Maintaining a healthy relationship with a social media audience is no easy task. You need to respond to them quickly and provide them with consistent high-quality content.

While you can manually do that, it will take your resources.

What you can do is leverage the power of automation. Social media automation tools like Hootsuite allow you to worry less about social media engagement. This lets you focus on more strategic tasks for your business.

Use Paid Advertisement

While building a social media audience organically is great, it requires time and a consistent input.

Paid advertisement is an effective option for eCommerce retailers that want quick results without having to invest a lot.

While it may be tempting to throw in your ad budget into every social media ad network, chose only the ones that can bring you results.

Let’s see which ad platforms can be most effective for eCommerce businesses.

Facebook Advertising

The popularity of Facebook is evident from its mammoth over-2 Billion active audience. This provides an opportunity to advertisers of any business.

Facebook advertising offers great potential for lead generation. If you want to build an email list of your prospects, Facebook ads are the way to go.

You can attract prospects to a landing page through a Facebook lead ad and offer them a freebie in return for their email addresses.

You can then nurture these leads using an autoresponder, educating them about your eCommerce products.

Price of Facebook Advertising

One of the best things about the Facebook ad platform is that it offers detailed targeting options. With the right targeted audience and strategy, you can get a great ROI (return on investment).

Facebook targeting options include age, gender, profession, education, and other demographic and psychographic data.

Instagram Advertising

Instagram has been an effective place for eCommerce sellers mainly because the platform’s visual content offers great appeal.

Using Instagram’s post, story, and reel, you can glorify your brand in front of the prospects, improving the chances of conversion.

Instagram’s ad platform is integrated with the Facebook Manager, so you are able to craft effective advertisements based on data.

Instagram also allows users to create shops and sell directly to customers from the platform. This takes out the middlemen and offers you better profits.

However, there is a nominal fee that Instagram cuts for every sale.

Whatever the platform, make sure you utilize the power of detailed targeting and retargeting. Other popular social media ad platforms include Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Track Your Social Media Marketing for eCommerce Strategy

Tracking your social media marketing for eCommerce strategy is important because it lets you improve on any possible shortcomings.

Without tracking, it would be virtually impossible to know if you are investing your resources the right way or not.

Track metrics like social media likes, comments, and shares. These represent engagement with your social media audience.

You should also track your eCommerce store traffic that you get from your social media accounts.

Keeping a log of your social media sales can help identify the strategy that works the best.

A lot of social media analytics tools out there can help you keep track of your progress. One of those is the Hootsuite analytics.

Final Thoughts

Social media offers great potential to eCommerce businesses to put their products in front of potential customers and get traction.

It has been an important part of people’s lives and is only growing in popularity. The best thing? You can get started with social media marketing for eCommerce without investing a dime.

However, trying your luck in paid social media advertising is another thing. It will require a well-planned strategy and a chunk of your marketing budget.

But, platforms like Facebook allow you to laser-focus your target audience, maximizing the chances of profitable action.

So, there is a lot of potential in social media marketing for eCommerce. If you haven’t leveraged social media for your eCommerce business, it’s never too late. Well, at least in this case.